Report on Mind Conference 2007, Bournemouth
Conference focuses on making mental health services work for all 
This year’s action packed Mind conference in sunny Bournemouth focused on “Moving and shaking – making mental health services work for all”.
And what a lot there was to be moved and inspired by! There was survivor Marion Janner’s Star Wards, which encourages mental health wards to become more survivor friendly, an exhibition of paintings, stalls of numerous mental health projects from the length and breadth of the country, and a Doncaster Mind project which uses survivors and professionals to deliver a unique talking service which has received very positive evaluations by service users with the minimum of contact time (and therefore, cost). And much, much more.
But despite the existence of such localised good initiatives, there was a general unease and suspicion about the Government’s evolving policy and legislation agenda. This was leaving many service users, progressive practitioners and thinkers feeling shaken but not always stirred in a positive way.
Take the Mental Health Bill for example. The Government continued to try and push through this Bill in the teeth of opposition from all sectors of the mental health world. In a debate with Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, people expressed concerns that CTOs would be used far too readily in order to free up scarce hospital beds. And Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley pointed out that the phrase “appropriate treatment” (one of the most controversial criteria for people to be forcibly treated under the Bill), suggested that the civil servants who drafted the Bill didn’t know what they were talking about. Lansley was himself once a civil servant.
His point was illustrated in a later debate by panellist Jane Allberry, (Mental Health Bill Manager at the Department of Health), who came across as unconvincing when trying to justify the Government’s soldiering on with the Bill around CTOs by saying they would help people back into the community.
From the floor of the debate Louise Pembroke suggested setting up a register for professionals who – demoralised by having to act as police rather than service providers – would sign a register stating they would not use CTOs..
According to research undertaken by Professor Graham Thornicroft, which paradoxically forms the basis for the Department of Health’s own SHIFT anti stigma programme, negative attitudes had been given a boost by the Bill. And this stigmatising attitude was amply illustrated by the continued use of the word “release” to refer to people who had been discharged from hospital. “We use the word “release for prisoners, but service users are not prisoners” said one irate delegate from the floor.
Academic and Black and Minority Mental Health Network member Prof. Kwame Mackenzie suggested that the confusion around terminology was symptomatic of the draconian nature of the Mental Health Bill, which seemed to have more in common with a criminal justice bill rather than a health bill.
Even the most positively received of recent Government initiatives - the White Paper Our Health Our Care Our Say with its concentration on shifting from secondary to primary intervention and increased service user choice and voice, was problematic in its application, despite it being emphasised as a major ‘moving and shaking’ of the mental health landscape for the better by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
But as Lansley pointed out, a cash strapped mental health system was often unable to actually deliver choice. CBT was a good treatment for some people, but according to survivor activist Louise Pembroke, the lack of cash was resulting in this fairly inexpensive treatment being offered to people who actually needed much more intensive (and expensive) psychotherapy.
In a later workshop, renowned author and psychotherapist Dorothy Rowe also emphasised the importance for many people experiencing severe mental illness of face to face long term psychotherapy, rather than innovations like CBT delivered via the internet, which was being rolled out in the aftermath of the Layard report.
Cost cutting was felt by many to be the real driver for Government reform of incapacity benefit. Though clothed in the language of empowering users back to work, one survivor noted how some Government ministers like John Hutton sometimes took the kid gloves off with declarations such as “we will not tolerate a culture of non compliance”. Such “venomous things [made] service users afraid. We feel we are not listened to”.
Many of the debates including this one had to be rescheduled to another time during the two days due to politicians shifting timetables and this caused a certain amount of organisational chaos. Patricia Hewitt explained that she had to get back to Parliament to vote on the building of casinos. Let us all hope that the gambling iniquity of the ‘postcode lottery’ of mental health services will attract equally serious prioritisation in the future!
Home | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions | Printer friendly
Site built by Net Efficiency Ltd